That’s interesting and worrying at the same time. I personally didn’t know how many foreigner families with more than two children live in Greece for more than ten years the criteria for receiving child benefit. Neither was I interested, nor did I care about. But now after the release of data by the Labour Ministry, we got an idea of how many families (Greeks and foreigners) with more than three children get children benefits.

That’s the interesting part as statistics and accurate information is rare in Greece. The worrying part, however, is the hint that members of GD apparently expand their “sphere of interest”…

According to Ministry of Labour and Social Security data,

Total number of families with three children: 176,350

Total number of families with 4+ children: 76,010

Total number of foreign families with 3+ children: 3,178

Greek Labour and Social Security Ministry released these data upon a question posed to Greek Parliament by a member of extreme-right and anti-foreigner party Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn). GD wanted to know how many foreign families receive children benefits and what’s the criteria.

“The meager child-benefits discourage large families and hinder Greeks from having children due to the high cost of life. But they encourage foreigners to have children because these benefits are relative high in comparison to those in their own countries,” GD-MP commented. (zouglar.gr)

Deputy Labour Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos explained that the benefits for more children and the pension for mothers are given to foreigners via OGA (Farmers’ Fund,) if the families have a permanent residence in Greece for more than 10 years and the children live in Greece.

Unfortunately I have no more data on the issue concerning mixed marriages. but I understand it concerns non-greek parents. the claimer has to live 10 years in Greece – iof this can make a logical clue…

I guess these people do not only live here. But also have been paying taxes for those 10 years and are therefor entitled to those benefits. The same as those who work here legally are paying into IKA, OGA, TEBE and so on. So they are entitled to child benefit, unemployment benefit and pensions.
Or would GD rather have that the taxes paid by these foreign nationals are being put in a separate account so their benefits can be paid from this? Might be a good idea as somehow I have the dark and itchy feeling that the amount of tax-dodgers among them could well be well below the Real Greeks level…
And it is sickening to see that the state is facilitating these racists and even changing their policies to appease them.

There was information about those CDs already 4 months ago and the government didn’t come forward with that until now. The question could be answered in a much more neutral way. There was no need to spell it out to every single country. Befehl ist Befehl was already dismissed as a defence in the Nürnberg trials all those years ago. It’s all a choice. And a deeply personal one too.
But the comment “The meager child-benefits discourage large families and hinder Greeks from having children due to the high cost of life. But they encourage foreigners to have children because these benefits are relative high in comparison to those in their own countries,” is totally devoid of any logic. Do these morons have any idea how high the child benefit in a country like The Netherlands is? And do they know how many Greeks are getting family allowances in those countries? OK, they don’t care, because they want this neck of the woods to be manned only by non B-negative blooded individuals.
Nothing real Greek about this though. Geert Wilders party does the same in the Netherlands. But there a minister refused once to answer blatant racist questions and was supported by parliament in that.
Guess there is a long way to go in that respect here, looking at the mess around the ethics committee in Parliament last week around other GD actions.